Not Compassion, But Justice

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi must not die a legally guilty man, since he is a morally innocent one.

Alliance with Syria is now so vital that, in addition to the simple question of justice, we cannot possibly allow this elephant in the room. As everyone who has ever really looked into the matter knows, that plane was bombed, not by Libya, but by Syria, whose support we needed (and received) in the Gulf War, without going into the question of sending our troops to die for the Al-Sabahs and the Al-Sauds when Saddam Hussein had been perfectly willing to sell us the oil anyway.

To those who say that the latest developments expose the madness of devolution, when a decision with such enormous foreign policy implications can be made by some Parish Councillor (and I write as a Parish Councillor) from a single-issue pressure group which has given up on its single issue, that would be perfectly true if the whole thing had not obviously been cleared with Downing Street and the Foreign Office. Without such clearance, Libya would not believe it (indeed, would have no way of knowing it), never mind be preparing to welcome him back. Did any separatist politician, never mind one from somewhere particularly dear to the hearts of the upper classes, obtain the necessary approval from MI6? Merely to ask that question answers it.

What’s that you say? “How come Labour MSPs are against, then?” Who asked them? Why would anyone ask Labour MSPs anything these days? And Scottish Labour MPs, one of whom is now the Prime Minister, never did ask Labour MSPs anything. Leaders of Councils, yes. Union godfathers, of course. But MSPs (like MEPs, in all parties and in all parts of the country)? Never. After all, why? In the privacy of the polling both, a good fifty per cent of Scottish Labour MPs voted No, No. Many of them toured the Lobby and the Tea Room to say so, secure in the knowledge that they would be unreported.

Labour MSPs who have not yet taken this hint need look no further than the manifest arrangement between the Labour Government and the SNP-run Scottish Executive in this case, with absolutely no reference to them. National Labour figures may emerge to cover their backs, but it is simply impossible that a deal with Libya has been done without central government. How, exactly? (If there really has been no such squaring, then the release will not happen. Watch that space. Ignore the rhetoric. If the release happens, then Brown has approved it. If he hasn’t, then it won’t. Simple as that.)

The Lib Dems are the same. Their supposed federalism is more to please the sort of people who vote for them in the South East of England and who like the idea of it, rather than the sort of people who vote for them in the North of Scotland and who have to live with it. This is very much like their stance on the EU, since they represent a slew of fishing constituencies from the whole of Cornwall (where UKIP recently topped the poll for the second European Election in succession), via North Norfolk, Berwick-upon-Tweed and North East Fife, to the Highlands and Islands, up to and including Orkney & Shetland.

On the special Ten Years On edition of Eorpa, it was in Gaelic that the view was expressed that devolution and the EU had given the speakers twice as many tiers of government as they had any need of. No wonder that Danny Alexander is rapidly turning into a latter-day Brian Wilson. At least one of his colleagues, meanwhile, will not suffer the words “West Lothian Question”, or anything else to do with devolution, to be uttered within his hearing.

But the Tories have had to be more grateful for small mercies, although they might not need to be for very much longer. And if (which I do not expect) there were to be twenty or thirty SNP MPs, then it would be laughable to suggest that they would pay anything more than the merest courtesies to anyone at Holyrood. In recent months and years, Angus MacNeil alone has got more done than the entire SNP “Government” (not its legal name) there.

Apart, I suppose, from making at least some sort of effort towards justice over Lockerbie. And even that can only really have been done by Gordon Brown. If he has not done it, then it will not happen. If it does, then he has.